First and foremost, I’ll get this out of the way: I abhor all commercial social media. I don’t trust them, I know users are the product, and - ultimately, I feel they’re nothing but a cancer on society.
But, I also have to acknowledge that, for one or two use cases at least, they seem pretty unavoidable.
For me, that one use case is Facebook Marketplace. Here in Australia, there’s simply no better alternative if you want to reach a large number of potentially interested buyers (or even buy some stuff yourself). The supermarket noticeboard is no more; the Trading Post was bought long ago and died on the vine; and Gumtree has devolved into a cesspool of nothing but scammers and fuckwits.
So, I use FB Marketplace. My FB account isn’t in my name, uses a throwaway email address, and has no followers or friends. It’s only a member of the local buy/sell groups that I’m interested in, and it performs no “social” activities (posts, likes, etc) at all.
Until now, I generally only use FB marketplace with a “clean”, dedicated browser on my computer, running in private mode and via a VPN. But, it means I frequently miss messages from interested parties when I’m away from my computer.
I also sometimes use the mbasic.facebook.com site from a private Firefox tab on my iPhone, but FB has just started telling me I need to use Chrome (no. fucking. way.) or Safari (maaaaaybeeeee?) after October 28th.
When I was on Android, there were a few wrapper apps that I was able to use but, so far, my searches for an equivalent on iOS have turned up nothing.
So, knowing full well this may lead to nowhere, I thought I’d ask this community: does anyone have a good, privacy-friendly way to use FB on iOS?
Thanks in advance for any useful tips or suggestions.
Hey mate, fellow Aussie here in almost identical situation, minus the “anonymous” Facebook account. I have one from decades ago in my real name that I haven’t used except for 2 Marketplace purchases in the last 15 years. I’ve tried creating new accounts in fake names, on public Wi-Fi with no luck. In one case the account was flagged for review and never approved, and in the other I was suspended until I would upload a selfie (how about no?). Do you have any tips on how you established a ghost account in the first place?
Not that it works with Facebook (I haven’t tried), but just want to drop a useful site for fake selfies.
They have an
.onionsite.Great suggestion! Thank you. Have you had any luck accessing it on iOS yourself?
No dramas if not - just that I tried using Orbot and the Tor Browser (the one developed by Mike Tigas, in the App Store), but no joy. I’m reasonably new back on iOS, so I’m not (yet) across the best way to use Tor sites on the platform.
Is there any privacy-friendly way to use Facebook
No
on iOS?
Double no.
I was about to post something similar to your reply. But OP says this, which is a reasonable explanation why they need (not want mind you) to use Facebook:
[…] Facebook Marketplace. Here in Australia, there’s simply no better alternative if you want to reach a large number of potentially interested buyers (or even buy some stuff yourself). The supermarket noticeboard is no more
As for iOS, OP said they abhorred commercial social media. They said nothing about their feelings towards abusive monopolistic OS platforms, so I assume they’re happy in their Apple prison.
The sad part of this story is that fucking Zuckerberg managed to make himself unavoidable in Australia apparently. That’s the real takeaway from OP’s post.
You manage to sound somewhat clueless in 3 words! Congratulations
You could try using it as a PWA. Just add the website to your home screen via Safari. You could also try using Brave to access mbasic.facebook.com. All browsers on iOS are basically just Safari (unless you live in the EU), but at least it comes with a tracker blocker built in.
Someone else mentioned PWA. I think I’ll investigate that angle next. If a PWA doesn’t share any data from my device, it means I can use my Mullvad VPN whenever I choose to access it, and get pretty darn close to what I’m trying to achieve.
Or just use Safari. I use a browser for FB for years on my Android phone. Only problem is that when I try to chat it tries to install messenger unless I am in desktop mode.
On a Windows laptop it is easy to use with a browser, even chatting.
